Upon meeting the one hundred per cent perfect girl
by AHS
Summary: Jackson reflects upon the first time he saw Lisa. Oneshot.


A/N: This is based on the fabulous short story by Haruki Murakami, 'On seeing the 100 per cent perfect girl one beautiful April morning,' and it sort of follows the line of Proxy. Everyone should read the Murakami story 'cause it's beautiful, and soooo poignant.

---

One humid September evening, at an absolutely packed field hockey game, I saw the 100 per cent perfect girl.

Honestly, she's really not my normal type. Like most guys, I go for the insipid, buxom model type, the girl with plump red lips and heavily lined eyes with a come-hither look, but she really doesn't stand out that way. She's short, her ankles are kind of thick, her hair is an absolutely sweaty mess. It's odd because she's so much older than her team mates, she must be in for her Masters and somehow didn't use up all of her eligible years of sports in her undergraduate years -- she has to be around my age. I seem to always go for older, more experienced women, if you catch my drift, but somehow I know that she's the 100 per cent perfect girl for me. I see her and I feel lost, stupid.

I know you have your own idea of a perfect girl -- maybe she's like my Lyna, a girl with pale skin, light eyes, silky hair, and a body to die for, a stereotype like that. Perhaps you're more into little imperfections like a well-placed mole, an eye that's slightly higher than the other, or something absolutely atrocious like dark-roots dyed hair. I suppose I have my own preferences, some amalgamation of things that constitute the 'perfect girl;' I mean, I have to have an idea, or she wouldn't be my 100 per cent, right?

No one can insist that his 100 per cent girl is the 100 per cent for everyone. Lyna, she'd seem like the perfect girl for so many guys, some kind of lingerie model with her creamy breasts and... well, she'd be the perfect girl. But she's not nearly as perfect as one might think. This girl on the field, with her messy hair and generally unkempt appearance, is certainly no fabulous beauty. It's odd.

'Last night, I saw the absolutely perfect girl,' I tell my confidante.

'Vraiment?' she says, her voice clear despite being thousands of miles away. 'Was she beautiful?'

I pause. 'I'm not sure.'

She laughs. 'Your favourite type?'

'Je n'sais pas,' I slur. 'Really, I don't remember much about her.'

'Like Lyna?'

'Nothing like Lyna.'

'So, did you talk to her?' she asks after a long moment of silence.

'No, just watched her,' I mutter. 'I think she noticed me, waved at me.'

After all, she's an almost nameless player on the field, and I'm a spectator. It's a beautiful night, if a bit muggy, and it probably would be a nice night for a hook-up, a night lazily spent at the beach.

I wish I could talk to her, really. I wouldn't need much time, just enough to get an idea of what she's like, if she'd be someone I'd be able to stand for longer than a quickie. I'd never be able to talk to her though -- I'm not daft, there's no way I'd be able to commit myself to something as inane as a relationship -- but it's interesting to see how these webs weave themselves together. What pieces fall together to create this one moment when our lives intersect?

What would I even do if I talked to her? Would we have a coffee or a drink, maybe go out for a drive, or make it back to my apartment for some usually dirty sex? The idea of this further piques my interest, but what would I even say? If I found her apartment in Gainesville and just showed up at the door, introduced myself and explained that I'd seen her at a field hockey game, would she be flattered or spray me with mace?

It would just be ridiculous. Very few girls like a stalker.

Maybe I'd wait until she came back for another field hockey game, meet her as she ran off the field and tell her that she moves so smoothly, that her team management makes for a nearly flawless game?

Even more ridiculous. As much as women love to be complimented on their good qualities, I typically tend to come across as some sort of crazed antisocial in seemingly normal conversations.

Maybe I could just straight out tell her that she's my perfect girl, but I doubt she'd believe it. A man she's never met before, someone who saw her on the field and found her so wonderful, so beautiful that he'd be drawn to her -- it would just seem superficial. What does that man know about her that would make him come up, something besides bouncing, sweaty breasts? It's not normal.

I don't see her for months, and I certainly don't seek her out. Not many people know it, but I do actively look for girls that look like her as I try to figure out what it was about her that pulled me in. Nothing clicks, nothing fulfils that need. By the New Year, I felt drained, and that definitely wasn't a feeling I typically felt when it came to something as absolutely meaningless as relationships. Angered and feeling quite frustrated from a huge dry spell in my sex life, I decide to do what any man does for instant pleasure: find some moderately clean girl in a bar and take her home, keeping her until sunrise and perhaps a 'thanks for the fuck' coffee.

She's there. Sitting in the darkest corner of the bar, she looks just as unkempt as she had at the game, but this time it's for no obvious reason. She looks exhausted, and as I get closer to her, i realise that the smell of alcohol absolutely penetrates the air around her. Against my better judgement, I talk to her, but needless to say, it doesn't end well. A half-hour later, she's in a cab, and she's lost to me.

Now, of course, I realise what would have been the best thing to say to her, what would have been the best way to pull her toward me. It wouldn't have lasted longer than our conversation at that jazz bar, but it would have meant more and perhaps even led to my bedding her. I don't know why I wasn't as suave as usual, but I guess she just had that odd effect on me.

As with most heinous pick-up lines, it would have started with something trite like 'once upon a time' and ended with something akin to 'isn't it sad?' to stimulate a response, whether it be a knee to the groin or a full tongue kiss. Perhaps a great risk, yes, but there is much at stake.

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. Each lived their own very different lives but in the same general area, and by great chance, came across one another in a very different way. To him, she was a surname floating across the speakers on a football pitch, and to her, he was just a smooth-looking man sitting in front of her parents in the stands. She believed in happy endings, he didn't even believe in love, but somehow, the universe knew how to sort this out to create simpatico, a syzygy of wonderful proportions.

One day, the two managed to find one another again. It wasn't the most classy of circumstances, the girl as drunk as a lord and the boy not much better, and they both smelled of stale cigarettes with a modicum of hopelessness, but each knew there was something no matter how much their brains implored them to be rational and run the other direction.

'You know, you're really beautiful,' he said in a slur. 'I think we'd really be good together.'

'I think you're insane,' she murmured, her finger making a circle around the rim of her glass.

He wasn't one to quit after the first failure; in fact, he always fancied himself above failure because of a steady stream of absolute victories. He just smiled and engaged in one-sided small talk, then followed her out of the curb and pestered her until he gave her an offer to quell his doubts.

'I'll make you a deal,' he said sincerely as he reached over to finger one of her curls; she retracted from him, but didn't make a move to leave. 'I'll leave you alone, but you have to make a promise to me. I think you're the 100 per cent perfect girl, and I think you think I'm the 100 per cent perfect boy, so I want to test this. If I'm right, we'll meet again, and if that happens, we'll know it's fate.'

She was obviously doubtful, but oddly intrigued. 'You can't seek me out.'

'I don't even know your full name,' he laughed, an unnatural move for him. 'How could I find you?'

She smiled, grabbing the door frame from him. 'I'll see you.'

So they parted, each one going a different direction to a different bar to end up at apartments at different ends of town. It shouldn't have been like that, fate knew that, but the boy and girl didn't. They should have started then and there, made a mutual agreement to try it despite their doubts, then they would have had a happier ending without myriad strings attached.

They didn't remember their promise, they didn't remember the entire night. They woke up at their different apartments at different ends of the town with different scattered memories of the night before, none of the memories of each other. Equipped with a lack of knowledge regarding their meeting, they just went about their different lives. Happy in her nest of her home town, she became a leader in her field, but he found himself settling into a jet-setting, moderately meaningless life. Both had their very different hardships, and they each changed according to the path of his or her life.

In the blur of their lives, they each tried to seek out that perfect mate, that one to fill the void encoded into each human that's filled by that one, but there was never someone to fill the hole. Displeased by this, both retreated into their own selves, finding companionship in books and business.

A few years passed and he found himself back in her city. Both went about their business, and in the course of his business, he found himself in close quarters with her, watching her every move as she went about her life. Finally, he came in complete contact with her, and there was that spark both felt in that dizzy bar state, but it was shattered when he revealed his deep truth to her.

Both knew the other filled the hole 100 per cent, but the trials of life and the expectations thrust upon him ruined everything, broke their delicate possibilities, ruined that shaky bridge of trust that she'd finally established between her heart and another's. She was his job, and his job was as the grim reaper, the harbinger of death, the creator of destruction. He had to break her, ruin her, threaten her.

He stood in that cramped aeroplane bathroom, her chin squeezed in his hands, his breath puffing against her cheek.

'It's a sad story, don't you think, Leese?'

Yes, that's it, that is what I should have said to her.


End file.
